Racism, sexism, ageism, supremacism, anti-Semitism:
these and other isms are based upon our unexamined assumptions. Many of these
assumptions we adopt from the significant others in our lives. They come from the dominant
messages that surrounded us at childhood from our parents, caretakers, older siblings,
teachers, media (mainly television), ministers and friends.

When JeanneE and I first moved to Vermont we
discovered what makes the state so beautiful, mysterious, friendly, independent, safe,
clean and wonderful. We made new acquaintances and friends, developed relationships with
neighbors, and established professional networks. Perhaps, when we move to a completely
different area, we are more prone to notice the assumptions that others make about us and
those we make of others.

When our daughter Guinnevere made friends with
children at the local village school, we met the parents. One weekend we were playing host
to a child until late in the evening. When the parents arrived to pick up their child a
short conversation revealed that the father, who was a drug user, assumed that by virtue
of my long hair and beard I was one too. Taken aback, I set the record straight in no
uncertain terms.

When my mother (decades ago) found out that I became
vegetarian, she made the assumption that I had joined some cult organization. She asked me
what "club" I had joined that required me to give up kielbasa, snitzel, pork
chops, chicken, turkey, etc. No amount of explanation could convince her that this was not
the case.

When I mention that I read extensively on spiritual
matters, depending upon which book I make reference to, people assume one thing or another
about me, basically what they want to tell themselves is true. I like vests and I
particularly like to wear the Sanskrit Om pin on my breast pocket as a reminder to return
to calm during the day. Often I have been asked what group I belong to that is associated
with the symbol. Occasionally, I am asked, by those who know what the symbol is, if I am
Hindu.

The Unfamiliar

A few years ago fellow teaching colleagues at a
local school were picketing for a better contract. I joined them early in the morning.
After spending an hour in the cold, we dispersed. I crossed the street when a pickup truck
quickly drove up and skidded to a stop. The driver opened his window and shouted,
"Why don't you get a haircut like a white man!"

How often have we heard people judge others? How
often have we ourselves judged? Because she wears those clothes, she is this way or that
way. He wears combat boots and has a clean shaven head so he must be a skinhead neo-nazi.
He looks like druggie; just look at the bandanna. He has long hair, he should get a job.
You can't trust anyone in a three-piece suit. These ego-driven messages come from the ego
as response to the unfamiliar, or the unknown. We are afraid. This place of fear creates
and feeds our assumptions. When repeated, these assumptions become prejudices and isms.

Artifacts

Assumptions are ideas and opinions that we formulate
about others and take for granted as being true. These ideas and opinions are based upon
the psychological artifacts of our life's experiences and preprogramming. The assumptions
that we make, and we all make assumptions, are products of how we see the world. We choose
to accept the kind of world that our ego decides, by allowing it to have its way,
by allowing its assumptions to become valid points of reference for us. We foist our
prejudices and perceived grievances upon the external world. These prejudices are the
thoughts we fill our head with. They are a projection of our internal psychic house onto
everything outside ourself. We then believe the myriad of assumptions we created to
be true. Without conscious awareness of these assumptions, we continually and
automatically respond to others (and their assumptions).

When we assume, we judge. As the old saw goes, to
assume is to make an ass out of both you and me. We can assume the
best and expect the worst. We can also assume the worst and expect the best. Better still,
we can assume nothing. We can be still, knowing that we are always safe.

Goals versus
Expectations

This school year began very difficult for our son,
Dylan. For whatever complicated pharmacological, developmental, psychological and
maturation reason, there was a rather lengthy spell where he had some difficulty in
school. He would come home complaining how everyone else was to blame for his difficulty. He
complained that his teachers would not let him do anything. They accused him of
causing all the problems in the classroom and so on. Some professionals assumed we were
letting him get away with too much. The behavior became so pronounced that he was removed
from the class. A similar pattern emerged at home. Dylan, his teachers, principal,
classmates, the classroom and we were in a state of on-again, off-again chaos.

Conferences and meetings were held. Some
professionals assumed that Dylan was deliberately behaving poorly. Admittedly, we parents,
exhausted and lost for concrete explanations, began wondering the same thing. We were
missing the most important ingredient in understanding what this was all about.

What helped turn the situation around was the
intervention of two people, fresh from the outside, with no preconceived assumptions, to
work with Dylan. In a non-judgmental fashion, Dylan's new support staff member worked with
him one-on-one as an advocate, guide and partner for success. A talented special education
coordinator, suspending all assumptions, recognized that "this young man's
behavior" was a "calling out for help." Dylan needed separation from
certain people; space; structure with non-judgmental, consistent consequences for
inappropriate behavior and appropriate reward for positive behavior. Mostly, he needed
time, space and loving acceptance. We all do. It has been months. Dylan has had wonderful
days at school. Recently, he passed two amateur radio exams to become the youngest
"ham" in the State of Vermont.

We all have expectations of ourselves and of others.
The goals we give ourselves may be very different than what we expect of others. Through
projection and unconscious reaction to our own failing, we may "take it out" on
others. When we develop expectations for others, we often externalize the
inappropriateness of own responses onto others, thus setting them up for failure in our
eyes and for our own disappointment. If we expect others to behave the way we want
them to, then we are making it difficult for them to succeed.

Contrast expectations with setting goals. When we
expect, we are disappointed when we or others fail. When we set goals, we merely readjust
our behavior or approach so that on the next try, our goals may come closer to fruition.
Expectation and assumption includes ego response. Goal setting incorporates monitoring and
adjusting with no emotional attachment to outcome. If our goals are not met, ego response
such as anger will not help.

When we combine our expectations with projection we
will be seldom happy. Our misery comes from our perception that nothing turns out the way
we want. After all, how can anyone or anything live up to ego's, (our god's) script?

Barometers

We are in relationship with everyone and everything,
including ourselves. Jerry Jampolsky describes a relationship to be like a sailing ship
where most of what we know about the other is hidden below the water's surface. With time
and increased interaction, individuals reveal more of their keel of identity. We become
familiar with the other person's foibles, strengths and weaknesses. When this happens, our
mutual assumptions may create a co-dependent bond.

Some people respond as emotional barometers to the
expectations of other people. Some do this more than others. Our son, Dylan, is an example
of such a sensitive barometer. Our unrecognized defeatist expectations create a reality
such that we see what we want to see. Dylan's unskillful calling out for help and the
school's misinterpretation of his negative behavior contributed to our experiencing what
we feared, exactly the behavior we did not want. All parties experienced what they feared,
and feared what they experienced.

People need not understand the assumptions others
make of them before they react. They can sense them. They sense them through inflection in
voice, body language, facial expression, muscle tension, etc. Their responses are
instinctive. Some of these responses were created through the interplay among: perfection
at birth, the split that takes place when the ego is created, and the inevitable collision
between it and that of the other's ego. A Course in Miracles refers to this as the
separation. It suggests that the mind becomes split when it creates and accepts the
false belief that we need something outside us in order to be complete and peaceful.
"These related distortions represent a picture of what actually occurred in the
separation, or the 'detour into fear." '

Valued Assumptions

Consider the expectations that we are most apt to
have. They are the valued assumptions we make of children, love and marriage. Judith
Viorst in Necessary Losses writes, "Part of letting our children go is also
letting them be, and that means letting go of our expectations for them. For consciously
and unconsciously, even before they are born, we dream many dreams about what kind of
children we want." Our assumptions, with the best of intentions, are that our
children will grow up the way we want. Our children, of course, are destined to become
their own independent entities. While our goals may and should include attempts at good
parenting, we should not assume that their experiences, successes or failures are the same
as our own.

I am an only child. I know not the rivalry nor the
camaraderie that takes place between brother and sibling nor among siblings. I grew up for
the most part alone in my family of three. When I see what appears to be holy war taking
place between my two children, there is a part of me that wishes to fix it. I assume that
something is not right between them. I assume that something must be wrong with my
parenting skills. Yet, their process of resolution, something I have little familiarity
with, could become a goal I simply observe, have faith in and let be.

In marriage, as Judith Viorst puts it, "We
bring...a host of romantic expectations...the married state - and the person with whom we
are sharing it - must fail to meet some, sometimes all, of our expectations." If we
diminish our assumptions and tend to the unfinished business of childhood (which includes
the naive notion that our partner completes us, a rather neurotic assumption), then we may
find marriage a good path to spiritual fulfillment. We become tolerant of each other's
imperfections. We learn from our mistakes. We develop a friendship, camaraderie, respect
and partnership that is both part and parcel of the self, the other, and the unified self.
We no longer assume the other will satisfy our needs or always meet our expectations.
Instead, as Viorst points out, our love will grow into a lasting love filled with
gratitude.

Samuel I. Greenberg, MD, in Neurosis is a Painful
Style of Living, makes the claim that neurosis "...affects, to a greater or
lesser extent, over 80 percent of the population, what is average or typical behavior in
our society is to a considerable degree neurotic." Once again we may be trying to
quantify something that is simply the human condition.

The neurotic person needs to plan everything
beforehand. He makes assumptions and has expectations about everything. Any deviation from
the plan causes great distress. The neurotic's assumptions are outrageous requirements of
others that cannot possibly happen. The projections of the neurotic then become new
assumptions that others have expectations that the neurotic cannot possibly live up to. As
the title of Greenberg's book states, Neurosis is a Painful Style of Living.

Possibly, defining people as Greenberg does, as
either neurotic or healthy, is an assumption in itself. On the continuum of human
behavior, it might be more useful to see neurosis as part of us all. Our diet, exercise,
chemical balance, psychic changes, physical changes through aging, maturation, all play a
role in how neurotic we currently are.

Attachment

Our attachment to our assumptions, the fervor with
which we cling to our assumptions, determine to a large extent our level of neurosis. Most
people in western society walk around daily, moment-to-moment, hashing and rehashing,
looking back at events, judging others based upon their expectations. We are attached to
other people's behavior, and events, taking place the way we want them to.

Dr. Wayne W. Dwyer in You'll See It When You
Believe It, says that we are both form (the body) and formlessness (the mind -
thoughts). "A large part of our being is formless, a part that includes all our
thinking, spirituality, and higher consciousness. Thought is one essential dimension in
which we do literally all our living...All our attachments are in form." To Dwyer,
attachment is hanging on, "defining our life purpose in terms of things or persons
external to ourselves." We expect to have lots of money. We assume our spouse will
take care of our needs. We want our friends to do this or that. We expect our students to
listen to us or for our patients to follow our care plan. And, if they don't, we feel we
are somehow worth less. Ours is an attachment to other's behavior. There is an emotional
charge in not having those supposedly sacred assumptions happen or expectations met. A
sorry way to live, our well being is at the mercy of everything outside our world of
thought, attached to some form other than ourselves.

The Tao
States:

"The wisest person
Trusts the process, Without seeking to control;
Takes everything as it comes,
Lives not to achieve or possess,
But simply to be
All he or she can be
in harmony with the Tao.

Detachment

"Detachment is an unwritten fact of the
universe which is always operating. The question is whether or not you are willing to tune
into it, making it operative in your daily life." When we die, nature lets go of our
body. The body disintegrates and is no longer there. All matter and energy changes from
one form to another, to other forms of itself, etc. Our formless reality, that of mind,
also becomes detached at our demise. Those things which today are so important become
inconsequential at the moment of our death. If we can, if we dare, imagine our death, then
we can clearly see how inconsequential our present traumas really are. Death then, as the
ultimate detachment, is a teacher before it even occurs. "Of all footprints that of
the elephant is supreme; of all mindfulness meditations that on death is supreme."
Then again, so is everything else that we experience. Whether we learn from this life
teacher is up to us. Death suggests what we might do now to lessen our neurosis, improve
our spiritual well-being, and improve our lives. In the end, it convinces us to let go the
ego's desire to have things go its way.

Transformation

Our assumptions disappear at the moment of death.
They become irrelevant. Now is the time to change our mind and eliminate those
assumptions. When we do so, we return to the Garden of Eden, where although everything may
not be paradise, it is just fine the way it is.

Ken Keyes, Jr. in The Handbook to Higher
Consciousness writes, "You were erroneously taught that happiness lies in getting
people and things outside of you lined up exactly to suit your desires." We need but
change our expectations that people and things need to live up to our scripts, change from
an assumption to a preference, to alter the way we view the universe and how the universe
treats us.

This small shift in thinking, which is a personal
transformation, has enormous consequences. It produces freedom. Dr. Wayne W. Dwyer defines
it thus: "So freedom is what abundance is all about. Freedom is the absence of
restrictions. Learning to rid ourselves of the freedom-defying belief in limits is one way
to create an abundant world for ourselves." Perhaps Dr. Dyer's book You'll See It
When You Believe It could also be called, When you Believe it, You'll See It.

This small shift in thinking is the miracle
that is referred to in A Course in Miracles. A Course in Miracles teaches that the
small shift requires no great effort on our part. We not need work on it. We do not need
to struggle to achieve it. We just desire it and it will happen. Our acceptance of the miracle,
which is always available, makes it happen. As our assumptions go away, more of our
freedom returns.

The Four Noble Truths

The Buddha spent much of life studying the cause of
human suffering. His "Four Noble Truths" say much about where suffering comes
from and what to do about it. The truths are:

Life is suffering.

We suffer because as the universe changes, we do not
change with it. We fail to recognize that change is life and growth. Growth comes from
living through the changes.

Our attachments, desires, expectations and assumptions are the cause
of the suffering.

We want permanence and security from a stability
which cannot ever happen in a changing universe. We cannot control much. Thinking we can
control everything is futile. Our desire to do so brings us pain.

There is way out.

The elimination or lessening of suffering is to flow
with changes that the universe orchestrates by dropping our desire to control people and
events. We dismantle our assumptions.

The Noble Eightfold Path is the Way Out

Right Understanding
Right Thought or Attitude
Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
Right Effort
Right Mindfulness
Right Concentration

Another path might be Right Teaching. A Course in
Miracles indicates that you teach best that which you need to learn the most. The
teacher "seems to begin to change his mind about the world with a single decision,
and then learns more and more about the new direction as he teaches it.

Story

In ancient times, there was a leader who was about
to lead his people in rebuilding the village after a typhoon. One day, he stopped at a
small roadside altar to pray. "I'm now going to use this coin to predict our fate. If
it's heads, we'll successfully rebuild. If it's tails, we won't." Kink. "Hey!
It's heads! We're going to raise the village! Let's get started! We'll pick up all the
pieces!" Just as predicted, the village was rebuilt from the rubble No one can change
a fate determined by the gods. Really? The leader reached into his pocket and pulled out
the coin, both sides of which were heads. Heaven looks on all beings just the same and
won't help anyone in particular. The one who can help you is yourself.

We Are Lovable and
Capable

Years ago, a teaching colleague gave me a booklet
entitled, I Am Lovable and Capable. The booklet describes a typical child's day.
She gets up, goes to school, interacts with her peers, teachers, parents, etc. She is
praised, talked both down and up to, treated fairly and unfairly, etc.

As an exercise we are to pull out a piece of paper
and write IALAC for "I am lovable and capable on it." As events unfold
throughout the day, we are to rip off a small piece of the IALAC paper with
negative events and tape back a piece with positive ones. At the end of the day, we may
wind up with a rather small piece of the IALAC original piece of paper. Every day
we begin with the same large piece of IALAC paper and start anew. I suggest that
being aware of our assumptions is a beginning to controlling how much of our IALAC paper
is ripped off with each external world event. Likewise, we decrease the need to tape back
the ripped off pieces. No matter what happens around us, we try to remain loving, lovable
and capable. The more loving, lovable and capable we remain, the more we are able to help
ourselves and others.

Meditation

You are the universe.
You are all form.
You are the breadth.
You are the river.
You are the void.
You are the desire to be enlightened.
You are enlightened.